Chapter 8

Clearing the outer door, Zolan leaned against the buffer, tightened his bootstrap with one gloved hand, the other pressed against the wall to steady himself. Seconds later, he pulled away, shook his leg to settle the boot for comfort, and caught up with Brad.

Grasping Brad’s elbow activated the secure to-suit circuit. Myra, Hodak, Adari and Kumiko crowded in close and energized a camouflaging mix of artificial jive and loud laughs on the nature of the terrain, the location of the Transit Strip, the tank town’s appearance in the distance, whatever served as a barrier to electronic penetration.

“The clerk passed the word about us,” Zolan said. “Gave full descriptions and said to notify someone called ‘Scarf’. By the way, he did a lot more than check our weapons while we stood at the counter. We were scanned down to our bones. He’s sending the file to his control, including the main portal’s lock combination on the Raven. He’ll have a lifter ready for someone who’s to arrive soon. Looks like they’re going to search the ship.”

“Fine,” Brad nodded. “Nothing there to cause us a problem. Pass the word as we move along. No changes in plans until some contacts develop. Then we’ll regroup and go on from there.”

Boarding a robo-taxi that had just discharged suited figures at a nearby mooring tower, the Sentinels lined up along the taxi’s portal. Zolan consulted a placard on the instrument panel and punched in the coordinates for Air Lock 22. As the flitter rose and headed toward the dome Brad thought back as he weighed their chances.

The processes of intense physical training and weapons drills, the concentrated telepathic loading of Plutonian political history and its government’s despotic apparatus had been cleared from their consciousness; the substance remained. Nor were they aware of any new or altered neuro-muscular capabilities or functions. They knew they had a job to do, and what the job was. They were on their own: no mercy from one side, no help from the other.

More than three-score sleeps had passed since their choreographed escape; only the events flashed through his mind; why they happened did not.

The Raven, on a lengthy umbilical-catwalk, had been tethered to the Guardian Station, ostensibly for maintenance after a servicing round of nearby communications boosters. The ship was skeleton-staffed. Brad and his companions had been secretly transferred beforehand to a cubicle adjacent access to the catwalk.

At Brad’s signal, the Sentinels moved quickly. Hodak, acting as clumsily as he could, slammed and locked the passageway safety doors with the loudest noises he could generate, broadcasting the unusual activity to all within hearing range and for electronic sensor pickup.

They had lurched and stumbled noisily along the catwalk, Adari suppressing giggles. As the last of the six cleared in through the Raven’s air lock, Hodak had hit “Emergency,” on appropriate switches and the ship-to-station servicing lines went through quick-disconnect. Portals closed and locked.

Within seconds, Brad was on the bridge and his crew at rehearsed departure stations. The caretaker officer and his two aides stepped aside, silent, businesslike. They were Ram’s men.

Adari hit the tether-disconnect. Disengaged, the catwalk coiled in toward the station as the ship edged away. Signaling Hodak for minimal repulse and acceleration to increase the drift, Brad ordered all hands immediately into accelo-nets. He increased thrusters to ‘low’ and, following a moment’s pause into ‘intermediate’. As soon as he sensed they could handle the acceleration he stepped the thrust up to successive levels.

The old tub creaked, pitched, rolled and yawed; lights flickered and dimmed; systems slipped into yellow or borderline red on half a dozen indicators, all recorded on the ship’s log. The Raven all but flapped wings, and true to her name, took off. To the hundreds who watched from the station’s portholes, the escape was real. The cover might hold.

The alarms went out from the Guardian Station to Sector Space Guard, and from there to a patroller conveniently distant.

Messages spunneled throughout the sector and to Earth and Luna: “Escape of dangerous felons,”, “Sabotage of station surveillance system,”, “Station 15 unable to respond in time,” or “Immediate pursuit and capture essential” with abundant ‘Expedites’ and ‘ASAPs’ scattered throughout the text.